Chapter 5 — Beach Explorations

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*****

~ 1 ~ “Everett, I’ve received an urgent request for a skilled Delver.” Benjamin, speaking privately with his apprentice in the Ontario Workshop, then warned him, “It concerns a delicate War Thing matter, so an element of personal danger is involved.” He smiled. “I’m offering the job to you.” Benjamin knew that he would be able to spare his valuable apprentice, because the Commons Crawler was nearly complete.

Everett grinned. “Master Benjamin, could I be in greater danger than I was when Indigo and I followed Hector’s command to cast you out of the Garth Maker’s Hold?”

Everett was recalling his experience of trying to drag his sister Indigo back to Hector’s side of the Hold’s gate, and being drawn, himself, into the collapsing Corridor down which he, Indigo and Benjamin had fled for their lives. Understanding now that he had been an accomplice to Hector in his folly, he felt that Benjamin was offering him a chance to redeem himself.

Smiling, Benjamin replied, “Well, it'll be no less dangerous, but you’ll be starting on the right side of the fence this time. You'll be working side-by-side with the new head of Home Construction, Leo Roberson. You’ve probably heard of him. He’s married to Antonia Vogel, a daughter of First Scribe Martha and her husband Kurt, the retired Home Ranch chief.”

“Of course I’ve heard of him; I saw Mr. Roberson at the Crawler Design Thing, and my sister Indigo has told me about Leo and Antonia; she knows everyone, now that she runs the Home Ranch kitchen.”

“Good. Everett, the site of the work is Quinceañera Beach on the Atlantic coast of southern Mexico.”

“Master Benjamin, I heard Second whisper the name of that place to one of the other Masens just recently!”

“Are you certain?” Benjamin leaned toward Everett, his eyes alert with interest and concern.

“Yes.”

“I think, then, that you’re nearly in personal danger already, right here.”

Everett hesitated, thinking about having learned, by working closely with some of the Masen clique on the Crawler, that their opinions did not square with the facts; yet it was useless to argue with them. He said, “Master Benjamin, do you think the Masens may be up to some mischief?”

“I’ve been keeping an eye on them since the beginning. The fact that whatever they’re up to may involve Quinceañera Beach, causes me even greater concern. I’ll pass on your information to Ricardo and Rhoda, and I’ll be more alert now, myself. Everett, will you accept this assignment?”

“Yes, Master Benjamin.”

“Good. Thank you. You will be working in a situation involving highly unusual tectonics about which the War Thing has only recently learned: A fracture field of both permanent and fluctuating tectonic offsets—a situation which has not been known for ages, and which is no less dangerous than the conditions in which the primitive Makers worked. Also, the site is a bastion of the Circle, in which the Clan has a foothold in the persons of Leo Roberson and some others whom you’ll meet there.”

~ ~ ~

Everett learned from Benjamin’s briefing that his assignment was to complete the land exit from the headland cave where two live Soviet atomic bombs had been found by Leo. The bombs were to be moved out of the cave “at the proper time”. When that was, and why, was a War Thing Secret. The part of the headland cave where the bombs were located was a mile from the forbidden quarter of Swinthila’s Hands, who were, Benjamin told him, the last creatures which Everett would ever want to encounter. It was known that the Hands were able to range in the Commons, possibly in the place where he would be delving.

Eugene had entered the Commons from the Hands’ quarter a week earlier, under Herbert Schooner’s guidance, and had been observed in the Commons by Hans and Yohanna, who had not then known the identity of the mysterious figure. Eugene, in Herbert’s Commons Explorer Device, had recognized them, and he had reported the sighting to Herbert.

Centuries earlier, the cornerstone of the Friend’s temple had fallen off its rollers because of its attraction to the abandoned Gardenland. That fall had created the field of radiating tectonic fractures which had baffled Rhoda in her attempt to locate the atomic bombs by using the Greased Lightning's senses. Knowing, however, that the bombs were there, although she had been unable to locate them within a square mile, she had visited the Beach in the Laura Payne Persona to learn more. She had succeeded only in confirming that atomic bombs were for sale at the Beach.

When Leo had reported having located the two atomic bombs in the cave, Rhoda had conjectured that a fluctuating tectonic fracture field must exist there, but she had wondered how it had come to be. Evidence from Yohanna’s expedition with Hans, Evelyn, Bridget and Victor through the Commons to the Beach, had confirmed the truth of Rhoda’s conjecture. Rhoda and Ricardo had realized, therefore, that getting the bombs out of the cave by using dynamite, as Cherokee had planned and which Leo intended soon to do, might prove to be a disaster of the worst sort. They had requested then, that Benjamin send a good Delver to investigate and to help Leo construct a safe exit for the weapons.

A fracture field such as the one which they now knew to exist there, has the effect of mingling the Commons with Earth’s Province in dangerous and changing ways. The field “sloshes around”, changing within days at its periphery. The far end of the tunnel which Cherokee had dynamited shut, may not have been in the fracture field, but the other end which he had planned to dynamite open was in a region of active fluctuation by the field—as Everett was to discover. Blowing up a part of the fracture field would almost certainly cause the bombs and the bomb handlers to be fractionated themselves, as had been many primitive Makers in the ancient world. Worse, the concentrated radioactive material in the bombs might detonate, the atomic explosions quickly becoming an international incident which would likely precipitate the Third World War.

~ ~ ~

In the dark, Everett and Leo quietly rowed a skiff across the Big Pool to the headland, and Leo tied the skiff to some small, twisted trees growing out of soil-filled cracks in the headland. The two men were wearing swim trunks, their work clothes packed in bags lying among Everett’s instrument cases.

Leo donned diver’s flippers and slipped into the water. Holding onto the gunwale, he said, “Wait here, Everett. After I get inside the cave, I’ll lower the cord from a winch on the ledge directly above. Attach the gear with the big swivel snap at the end of the cord, and I’ll haul it up. When that’s done, I’ll return to the entrance and shine the lantern’s light into the pool. When you see the underwater glow, slip into the water, take a deep breath and follow the glow. After swimming only about a dozen feet underwater, you’ll be able to pop up into the air in the cave.” Leo took a deep breath and slipped under the water, turning on his lantern, and Everett watched Leo’s wavering underwater figure swim right into the underwater rock wall and vanish from his sight.

~ ~ ~

Cherokee, after seizing them from Cherenkov’s faction in a bloody raid in Honduras, had hidden the two atomic bombs in the cave. Then, after Cherokee had long been absent from Quinceañera Beach, Leo had discovered the cave’s underwater entrance.

The underwater entrance opened to a small pool about twelve feet in diameter which lay at the bottom of an ancient shaft leading up to the cave. Into the walls of the rough-hewn shaft, thick pegs had been pounded to form a spiral stairway by which, climbing like a monkey, a person would be able to access a low chamber of the cave, about twenty feet above river level. On one side, the chamber opened to an otherwise inaccessible ledge overhanging the river, and on the other side the chamber opened through a door into the cave itself.

Standing on the ledge in the starlight, Leo pulled up Everett’s Calipers and his other equipment from their skiff, using a light winch which Cherokee had left among other equipment in the cave. Leo then returned to the pool and pointed his underwater lantern toward the entrance through which he had swum.

Everett’s head soon popped up above the pool’s surface. After exhaling and catching his breath, he said, “A dozen feet is a long way in dark water, Leo. I thought it would be a narrow passage, but I had no sense of its sides underwater; I saw only the rock ceiling above me.”

Leo helped him up to the narrow shelf at the foot of the spiral of pegs. “Everett, I found this entrance in daylight,” he said, “and I had the same sense then; it’s like the headland hides a vast chamber of water below us here. But there’s no time to explore it now. We have to climb up these steps like monkeys to get to our job.”

“Wait, Leo; my work really starts right here. Benjamin informed me that this place is very likely within a centuries-old tectonic fracture field radiating from an old abandoned Clan Gardenland. The Gate of the Gardenland is only a mile or so from here. I suspect that you and I are now standing in a fluctuating anomalous tectonic structure, and it may be that this strange body of water under our feet has been created by the erosive edge of this field. Before I can delve your new gate, I need to measure the tectonic tensions around us.”

Leo silently shook his head, sensing that now was not the time to ask for explanations. Ricardo had told him that he and Rhoda were sending him some help of which Leo had not known his need, and Everett was that help. Cherokee had left the machinery for boring into the thin rock at the end of the cave, along with the dynamite for blowing out an exit. Leo had been prepared to do that job, but then Ricardo had informed him of the discovery that it was not a good idea at all.

He said, “Everett, you must need some of your tools down here.”

“Yes, Leo, I do—but only the case marked ‘G’. While you’re getting it for me, I can acclimate myself to the rock of this shaft.”

Everett immediately dropped to his hands and knees and ran his hands over the flat surface cut into the rock. He lay one ear against the surface, and then the other.

Leo, after briefly watching this strange behavior, set the lantern to shine upward and quickly climbed up the dimly-illuminated monkey’s stairway to look for ‘G’ among the items lying in the chamber above. Among them was a second lantern which he set on “dim” so that the light needed for searching for “G” would not be noticed, giving away the high chamber’s existence to anyone watching the headland.

The reason for their secrecy was not to evade Retimer’s guards or the nominal Resort security. Witteric had requested that Leo do his tunnel work in secret because Witteric suspected that there were spies among the guests at the Resort—from other arms dealers, or from rival nations or political factions who had gotten wind of the pending sale of rogue atomic bombs. Witteric’s greatest fear was of the Americans sending in a large military force at the hour in which the bombs were brought out—or sooner, if they learned of the bombs’ locations. None of these factions were able to know for certain that the bombs were in fact sequestered here, but it was generally known that Quinceañera Beach was, for Cherokee, a hub for other major black market weapons deals.

Leo worked his way back down on the spiral of pegs, lugging the “G” Calipers case. He saw that the upward-shining lantern light gave Everett’s face a kind of young wizard look. The young wizard said, “We’re really in an anomalous tectonic structure here, Leo. I’m sensing it naturally, so I’ll be able to quickly make my measurements of its tensions and directions.”

Leo’s experience of Makers’ work consisted only of Rhoda’s casting of a Net, and evidence that she and Ricardo had the ability to read other people’s Living Memories. He had never before seen a Maker at work. Now he held the lantern to aid Everett in donning his Calipers, each arm of which ended in three foot-long drooping “fingers”. Everett connected the two arms to a kind of metallic breastplate over his bare chest, while intoning a chant in a language which Leo recognized as Old Goth. The fingers of the arms came to life then, standing out stiffly and surprisingly long. Everett ran those fingers in a caressing manner over the rock surfaces of the shaft and of the ledge upon which they stood, while an oval-shaped violet light floated over the stone between the Calipers’ splayed three-fingered hands. To Leo, it seemed that Everett was looking through the violet oval as through a kind of lens which allowed him to peer into the stone itself. He watched Everett next work the fingers caressingly over the pool’s still water, then rest his body against the water’s surface to lean far out over the pool, so that while he peered through the lens of violet light, the water’s surface supported his weight!

Watching Everett press against the water’s surface for leverage to stand up, Leo saw no sign of movement in the surface of the pool.

“Good news, Leo: We’re in an anomalous projection,” Everett announced. “That means I can work much more quickly than I’d be able to if I had to establish a ground to the Commons, like a lightning rod, for my delving.” Everett quickly removed his Calipers and stowed them in the case which Leo had lugged down to him.

“But, Everett, the bombs aren’t here; they’re located some distance from here down the tunnel.”

“Oh, I saw them, Leo. They’re inside this projection.”

Leo looked at the solid rock wall around them. “Everett, it looked like you were peering through that violet lens of light.”

“I was.”

“So, where are the bombs? In which direction?”

Without hesitation, Everett pointed in the very direction in which Leo had reckoned that they lay.

“Is looking through that violet lens kind of like having Superman’s X-ray vision?”

Everett laughed. “I’ve never thought of it that way! I guess it is, in a way, but gauging Calipers have no power to ‘see’ through the rock of Earth’s Province.”

“Aren’t we on the Earth right here?”

“Not quite, Leo. Here, we have one foot, so to speak, in the Commons. A tectonic anomaly is actually the threshold of the Commons. During my apprenticeship to Benjamin, I’ve learned to detect an anomaly by using all of my senses. That’s what I was doing while you were getting my gauging Calipers; I even tasted the rock here with my tongue.”

“You said you were measuring the anomaly’s tensions and directions. Have you just now done that with those Calipers? If you have, what does it mean? You’re the first Maker I’ve seen in action, Everett.”

“I did make those measurements, and what it means is that I can work more quickly than Benjamin had estimated, so it will take much less than a week for us to finish. Although I’ll try to explain things as we go along, I’ll have to keep in mind that Benjamin said Ricardo told him that hours may be important in the unfolding of events, and ‘what Leo is doing is crucial for the War Thing.'"

“You’re right, Everett. Time is crucial. My curiosity was getting the better of me.”

While talking, Everett had picked up his Calipers case and had slipped on its harness, preparing to ascend the peg stairs with the Calipers case on his back like a backpack.

“I didn’t see that harness in the dim light, or I would have used it.”

“I should’ve mentioned it, Leo. Sorry. I’ll follow you up.”

In the dim light shining up from the lantern at the base of the shaft, Everett followed Leo, using all four limbs like a monkey to negotiate the spiral of pegs climbing the twenty-foot height.

The full dark of night greeted them at the head of the shaft as they clambered out into the chamber in which Everett’s instruments lay. The lack of headroom in the chamber forced them to choose between stooping and squatting. A narrow crescent of stars, barely visible where they shone through an opening in the chamber’s wall, guided them to the ledge from which Leo had winched up the instruments. Leo had brought the winch back into the chamber, so that it would not be seen from outside in daylight. Outside, the ledge itself was unnoticeable, even with the use of binoculars, but the winch would be noticed. Leo peered down from the ledge on the massive headland cliff, to their skiff’s location; he saw no light leaking out into the dark water below from the lantern left in the base of the shaft.

The two men crawled to the back of the chamber, where Leo had piled their gear next to a closed door. Leo said, in the hushed voice commanded by the darkness, “There’s a door here, Everett, which you can’t see in the dark, but you can find it because I’ve piled our gear to the right of it. Open it and crawl through to the other side, where there’s headroom, and I’ll hand you the gear. Then I’ll crawl through and close the door. Then we can risk a little light for carrying the gear down to the bombs’ chamber, where we’ll also find the equipment that Cherokee left. There, we can use all of the lantern light we need, to do our work.”

Who is Cherokee? Everett did not ask, for they had much work to do.

~ 2 ~ On the next day, when Hans and Yohanna arrived at the Cortez Cottage where Leo and Everett were lodging, Yohanna had already been in and out of Quinceañera Beach several times, as negotiator for the Arab clients. This was Hans’s third visit to Quinceañera Beach, this time arriving by seaplane rather than through a Pathway in the Commons. Yohanna, Ricardo and Benjamin all thought that the concurrence of Hans’s visit to the Beach with Everett’s would profit all of them. Yohanna’s duties left her little time for Hans, but Hans and Everett, both advanced young Maker apprentices, would have much to learn from each other. They knew each other already, both having been at the Commons Crawler Design Thing at Home Ranch.

In the days of that Design Thing, Everett had been a competent young Maker and Hans had been a neophyte Maker. Everett had become Master Benjamin’s apprentice, and Hans had become apprenticed to Ricardo and Rhoda—the most able Keen Makers since Thiuderieks, Thorismund and Ingundis the Fair. Hans had flourished in the light of his mentors, rapidly advancing in ability. He was now nearly as competent a Maker as was Rhoda’s father, Martin—except in the matter of sagacity.

Hans, the pacifist, had been entrusted with preparing a clever defense of Thiuderieks’s Garth and the Clan’s Holds, against the day of the Foe’s vestment in the Soma and the grave uncertainties of that dark event’s outcome. The Design of his flock of shorebird Animas realized Frederick Knox’s vision for the Minotaur, which would range over the Great Maze, defending the Clan Holds from intrusions by the Foe’s forces in the Commons.

When Ricardo had brought Hans to the Ontario Workshop, he and Hans had talked for a few minutes with Everett, who had keenly felt Ricardo’s authority and his prowess as a Keen Maker.

Now, Leo reintroduced Hans to Everett as “someone I first met as a fellow biologist.” Everett did not understand the meaning of “fellow biologist” any better than he had known the identity of Cherokee. He was struck by wonder, however, by the Maker’s authority and prowess which he felt emanating from Hans, which was so much like that which he had felt emanating from Ricardo. He knew then that Hans, the apprentice, was rapidly approaching his mentor’s level. Nevertheless, he found himself easily conversing with Hans about Makers’ matters, responding to Hans’s open, easy manner and his intense curiosity about delving, in which he had received little instruction. Everett was unaware of Hans’s feeling that Everett was nearly as competent a Delver as Benjamin. In fact, Benjamin knew that Everett was the best apprentice ever mentored by him, in all of his long life. He had confided that fact to Ricardo only.

Leo left Everett and Hans to themselves for several hours, while he and Yohanna pursued their own businesses at the Beach. During that time, Hans told Everett about the expedition in which he had participated, led by Yohanna, through the Commons to the wine cellar of the Cortez Cottage. Everett said, “Hans, Benjamin has told me that an anomalous tectonic structure radiates from an abandoned Gardenland less than a mile from us. That means you’ve been in the fracture field that I’m investigating in my work for Leo.”

“Yes,” Hans replied, “and Yohanna and I encountered someone in the Commons who may have been a Maker of the Circle, who was tethered to something which Ricardo later concluded might well be the Gardenland’s Gate.”

Everett had been astounded to hear that Yohanna, a Word Wise, had led that expedition; now he understood that she was, as rumored, Rhoda’s understudy in the War Thing. He said only, “That is interesting! Benjamin didn’t tell me about that Maker. Hans, the Maker might have been tethered because the Circle knows about the fluctuating anomalies.”

“Really? What exactly are fluctuating anomalies, Everett?”

“Well, we Delvers make use of controlled tectonic fluctuations to ‘soften’ rock so it can be easily delved to make tunnels and chambers. Technically, we’re talking about ‘fingers’ of fluctuating partial tectonic offsets moving among permanent tectonic offsets. What’s weird here is the size, the age and the randomness of the fluctuations.”

“Partial offsets plagued primitive Makers, didn’t they?—causing fractionation?”

“That’s right Hans, and sustained random fluctuations of partial tectonic offsets do weird things. I’ve found one very slow-moving partial tectonic fluctuation at the site of my work for Leo. Its presence has allowed river and tidal water movements to naturally delve a large hidden pool in the headland.”

“Everett, an unsealed Gardenland Gate could well be like a Workshop’s Back Gate left open: A permanent fracture field of some essential dimensions would grow out from it into the Commons. That might explain the permanent tectonic offsets of this field.”

“But, Hans, the permanent tectonic offsets of this field are in the Plenum of Earth’s Province, while the fluctuations arise in the Commons. That’s more like an open Front Gate problem.”

“You’re right! Maybe there’s a primitive Maker’s workplace near the Gate of the Gardenland.”

“That’s a good hypothesis, Hans, except for the question of how the workplace got to America. Primitive Makers existed only in Africa and Eurasia, thousands of years ago.”

~ ~ ~

Over the next few days, the friendship between Everett and Hans grew, and they became good friends. But Everett was left out during the times when Yohanna was briefly in their company. He witnessed an intimacy between Hans and Yohanna which confirmed the truth of rumors about them which he had heard. He was happy to have news now to share with his sister Indigo in Home Ranch, not understanding that she would have little interest in it, because her focus at Home Ranch was almost entirely on her relationship with Rhoda’s brother Manuel. Being kitchen head and a hub of Home Ranch gossip was of secondary importance to her.

~ 3 ~ In the stone wall of the cave was a soil-filled vertical fissure, only a few inches wide, into which Cherokee had pounded a long rod, through its highest part. He had been planning to enlarge the fissure with a small blast of dynamite in order to be able to locate it from the outside and clear away the rubble which might impede the bombs’ removal.

Leo had found the rod inside the cave. Seeing the hole through which it had been pounded, he had guessed at its planned use and had pounded it back though the hole in order to find, outside, the spot where the blast would create an entrance to the cave. He had discovered that in front of the planned opening a clearing had been recently made, and the clearing had been artfully hidden by a leaving a curtain of vegetation around it. Then Leo had received a response from Ricardo, telling him not to blast out a new entrance. Leo had then arranged for a wooden gate to be made, hinged and framed and sized to fit an opening large enough for the bombs’ removal. He had hidden the gate near the site of the planned cave entrance.

~ ~ ~

Everett had inspected the gate and had taken its measurements. Then he had asked Leo to help him carry it over and place it in the exact location in which it was to be installed when the opening had been made. After they had returned the framed gate to the place in the vegetation where Leo had hidden it, Everett had said, “This is just to get a feel for it, Leo.” Leo, however, had felt that there was more than “feel” to their odd performance with the gate.

Now, Everett was inside the cave, ready to cut out the opening for the cave’s beachside gate. Leo was ready to receive another lesson in Makers’ secrets.

Using ordinary tools, Leo and Everett prepared the cave’s wall from inside, measuring and marking with chalk an outline of the gate. Everett, preparing to cut along that outline, assembled an array of Calipers. Then he set to work.

Leo was not needed for anything while Everett was working, except to watch Everett while standing behind a line marking a “safe distance” which Everett had drawn with his foot in the dirt of the cave’s floor. Leo watched Everett don a set of Calipers and use them to etch the gate frame’s outline into the wall along the chalk mark. The left hand Caliper was like a large mitten which Evert pressed against the inside edge of the chalk mark while he ran the right hand Caliper, which was like a single pointed finger, along the chalk mark itself, making a quarter-inch-deep etched line. Leo was expecting him to simply perform this action repeatedly to gradually cut out the cave’s entrance. Instead, after etching the frame’s outline into the living rock wall, Everett put away the Calipers and used his own fingers to feel, in several places, the area within the etched outline of the gate. He placed one ear and then the other against each of these places, then smelled and gingerly tasted the rock with the tip of his tongue.

Leo, standing behind Everett, smiled and shook his head. He watched Everett nodding approval to himself while taking out a second pair of Calipers. This pair, although smaller than the gauging Calipers which Leo had seen Everett use in the access shaft at the underground pool, were similar in appearance and they seemed to work in much the same way. The many-fingered caliper arms produced a much smaller lens of violet light, through which Everett seemed to peer into the cave wall in the area into which the gate was to be placed. Everett worked intently in this manner for an hour, and Leo became bored. Then, suddenly, Everett leaped back from his work to the "safe distance” at which Leo was standing.

Everett slowly removed his Calipers while staring at the rock wall. Leo, who had almost fallen asleep on his feet, was now focusing his attention again on Everett’s work. After a short time he became dizzied by a blurring of the sharply-incised outline of the gate’s frame and of the irregular rock surface within the outline, while the surrounding cave wall remained unchanged.

“What’s going on Everett?”

“I’ve succeed in dilating the ‘present moment’ of the wall, within the section marked for the gate. What you see—or can’t see—is the first matter of the minerals as the gods are making it.”

“I don’t know what you mean, Everett.”

“Oh. …You haven’t had a Maker’s education. …In our present moment—right now, as we’re talking—the gods are creating the first matter of our acting human bodies; we naturally receive it and complete its creation by our actions and experience, making our present moment.”

Leo silently pondered this, his dizziness fading away and his fascination growing as he seemed to see through the blurriness of the gate’s opening, into the past and into the future over some vast space of activity. He was seeing nothing distinctly until he began to catch glimpses of the wooden gate taking shape.

Then Everett said, “We have to leave now, Leo.”

Much of the day had passed. It was now mid-afternoon. Hans had dropped them off early in the morning and had then returned the skiff to the dock. A number of people would be at the pool’s far side, and probably some braver souls would be swimming in it, despite the continuing rumors about imported crocodiles, after years without an incident.

In fact, two very large crocodiles lived in a large guarded pen located upriver of the troops’ quarters. Froggy and Hank, their keepers, spoke very little about them, but enough to keep the rumors alive.

Everett and Leo returned to the chamber twenty feet above the pool, where there was sufficient daylight from the chamber’s narrow vertical opening to the ledge, for the men to get to the shaft with its peg stairs without striking their heads on the irregular low ceiling of the chamber.

They stripped down to their swim trunks and, leaving their clothes at the edge of the shaft, they descended, feeling their way with their feet on the pegs spiraling down the dimly-lit shaft. Arriving at the bottom of the shaft, Everett sat down on the narrow ledge, his feet dangling in the water. Leo sat down next to him, and the men looked down into the deep water. They watched small fish swimming in the diffused daylight which shone through the water under the dozen feet of rock separating them from the river.

Everett, his eyes focused on the fish, said, “Now Leo, we’ll have to pop back out into the river and swim along the edge of the pool toward the seashore. Then we’ll need to hike around the headland to where the gate is taking shape.”

Leo turned toward him. “I’m not quite sure what your plan is, Everett, but I know that I should go first. The headland is ‘Off-limits’, and a guard is posted there now; I’ll wave him off. Probably, we won’t even be noticed by others in the pool at this time of day when we pop up out of nowhere. But for security’s sake we should swim underwater as much as possible until we reach the shallows. Gimme thirty seconds and then follow me.” Leo took a few deep breaths, then slipped down under the water’s surface and swam under the rock in the direction of the incoming sunlight. After about thirty seconds, Everett followed.

They made their way, incident-free, to the place where the gate was to be located. Leo saw immediately that the gate and its frame were not in the place to which he and Everett had returned it after moving it around on the previous day.

“Everett, did you have Hans or someone else move it?”

“No, Leo. You and I moved it yesterday. Do you remember me saying that I had dilated the present moment of the gate site?”

“Yes, but I didn’t know what you meant by that.”

They stood now before the gate, which was “taking shape”in its intended location on the rock. Leo saw that it was flickering in a manner similar to that which he had seen less than fifteen minutes earlier from inside the cave. Everett moved closer to it. “Don’t touch it yet, Leo, but when I say, ‘Now!’, I need you to help me shove the gate inward, hard.”

The gate flickered into substantiality. Everett called, “Now!” and both men pushed hard against it.

In the first moment, the material of the gate felt soft to Leo, before hardening into real wood—the wooden gate which he and Everett had moved yesterday. Oh, it was yesterday… No, it was today, and the gate was swinging inward. They entered into the chamber which they had recently left, and in the light from the open doorway Leo glimpsed two men quickly moving away from them up the cave’s passage out of the chamber in which he stood …

Everett steadied him until his dizziness passed. “There we go, Leo, at the beginning of the gate’s installation Niche. Perfect!”

“I thought that was us, Everett, and I thought I was going to dissolve. Thanks for holding me up.”

“Don’t worry, Leo. Catching a glimpse of ourselves is just part of a job like this. But we will have to hang out in this chamber for an hour or so to mellow properly.”

~ ~ ~

On the following day, Leo conducted Sisebur through the gate to inspect Everett's work. Sisebur brought the two Russian technicians with him, who then certified that these bombs, like the others, were genuine.

~ ~ ~

“The workman who helped Leo to fabricate the gate between the cave and the shore is from Leo's own company,” Sisebur reported to Witteric. “The gate is located behind a big tree, where we can hide it with rock rubble when this business is over, keeping the cave a secret. Using a come-along winch, two men can skid the bombs to the beach, where Leo’s front-loader can handle them.”

Witteric then notified Retimer of the gate’s location, so that Retimer would be able to station four of his troopers there to provide cover when the bombs were brought to the beach for transfer to the Czarina’s submarine.

~ 4 ~ “Julia, my cook, says you boys have spent a lot of time in the wine cellar.” Laura Payne was speaking to Everett and Hans, who were eating dinner with her and with Yohanna and Leo. Looking into her hand mirror as she spoke, Laura removed the Persona’s hair fork, becoming Evelyn instantly. Everett was startled, but he understood and he recovered at once, knowing Evelyn to be Rhoda’s apprentice.

“Everett has spent most of our brief time giving me introductory delving lessons,” replied Hans, unfazed now by Personas.

Everett described the modest exploratory trek which he and Hans had made from the wine cellar into the tectonic fracture. He added, “I think the wine cellar’s tectonic offset was made after the Cottage had been built. Fluctuating tectonic fractures can move slowly, and they would be weakly attracted to the wine cellar’s offset.”

“Does that slowness explain why no tectonic chamber was discovered by Cherokee behind the wine cellar?” asked Leo.

“Yes,” Evelyn answered, “and I think I understand a little more, Leo. We—that is, Walter Payne and Laura—found the land grant in the wine cellar, and the cellar must have been delved after Cherokee had established a presence here at the Beach. The Clan did the delving, and they hid the land grant some time after the original colonists had sealed the Gardenland. It was later that the moving fracture field was attracted to the cellar’s tectonic offset.”

“Maybe the Clan leased the Cottage from Cherokee as a cover,” suggested Leo. “What was he called in those days?”

Yohanna answered, “Godogisel”.